27. Now, although the historical accounts of Strabo, collected at a time when these regions had been ravaged by conquest, and had undergone manifold changes, have not the value which the statements of Herodotus and Thucydides possess, yet it is possible to extract from them much information. In the first place it should be observed that the Epirots and the Illyrians are not considered as two wholly distinct nations. The Epirots, although in early times allied by blood with the Greeks, were always considered as barbarians,(2062) and Ambracia as the last city in Greece;(2063) which fact, since the original inhabitants were the same as in Arcadia, that is, Pelasgians, can only be explained by supposing that there had been a mixture of Illyrians. Hence it might be at that late time difficult to distinguish between the Epirots and the Illyrians; and thus Strabo includes the Atintanes, who according to Scylax(2064) and Appian(2065) were Illyrians, among the Epirot nations. It is more singular that he should consider the Orestæ, whom Polybius(2066) recognises as a Macedonian people, as Epirots; but it may be probably accounted for by the circumstance of their separation from the cause of the Macedonian kings, which procured them their independence in the year of the city 556.(2067) But the other inhabitants of Upper Macedonia, the genuine Macedonians, such as the Lyncestæ and Elimiots (who probably, from being mountaineers, had preserved their national distinctions more than the civilised tribes of the lowlands), were considered by Strabo, as the context plainly shows, as original Illyrians; and it can hardly be doubted that they still bore the characteristic marks of that nation.